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Fort Indiantown Gap plans major project

The Air National Guard plans include constructing new facilities and demolishing old ones

By BRAD RHENLebanon Daily News

Updated:
01/23/2013 05:11:03 PM EST

A sign points out the Fort Indiantown Gap Air Guard Station. A project is in the planning stages that will include the construction of 27 new facilities and the demolition of 19 old ones. (LEBANON DAILY NEWS EARL BRIGHTBILL)

The Air National Guard station at Fort Indiantown Gap could have a significantly new look to it in the future.

A major project is in the planning stages that includes the construction of 27 new facilities and the demolition of 19 old facilities. A land swap with the Army National Guard would also increase the size of the air station by 85 acres.

The National Guard Bureau recently released a 256-page draft environmental assessment, or DEA, that concluded the project would have no significant environmental impact.

"This environmental assessment is a milestone in the programming and approval process for our major modernization efforts at the Air Guard station," said Maj. Joel Sattazahn, Fort Indiantown Gap's civil engineer. "This looks at the next 20 years of modernization efforts to get out of facilities that were built in the early 1940s."

According to the DEA, most of the existing facilities on the installation are World War II-era temporary buildings that are "well past their normal lifespan, inadequate to accommodate current missions, let alone future ones, and requiring regular, extensive repairs to remain in minimal operating condition."

The buildings are undersized and poorly configured, and they have inadequate and undersized utilities support as well as inadequate fire protection, the report states. In addition, they are poorly insulated and have antiquated heating systems, resulting in wasted energy.

"It's modernization that's needed," Sattazahn said.

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The project detailed in the DEA is actually a conglomeration of several projects, he said.

"Each project is a standalone project," he said. "Most are in the planning stages somewhere. Some of the projects listed on the strategic site plan have been constructed already, some of them are in construction now, and the rest of them are in some sort of programming or design stage."

Sattazahn estimated the project is about 40 percent complete.

The National Guard regularly goes to great lengths to protect the environment at the 17,000-acre Gap. It often touts the fact that the installation is home to the only colony of rare regal fritillary butterflies in Pennsylvania. It is also home to dozens of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and plants.

The environmental impacts of this project are negligible because most of the land involved has already been developed, Sattazahn said.

"We are developing some in that area ... but not significant amounts," he said.

All of the land involved in the proposed land swap is already considered part of Fort Indiantown Gap. It is merely being transferred from the Army Guard to the Air Guard.

"It's all Pennsylvania state-owned land that is leased to the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force, ... so there is no private land or public land," Sattazahn said.

The air station currently occupies about 190 acres on the eastern end of the Gap, but not all of the land is contiguous. The swap would increase the size of the station to 275 acres, all of which would be contiguous, Sattazahn said.

The DEA can be viewed at Matthews Public Library, 102 W. Main St., Fredericksburg, or a digital version can be requested by emailing ang.env.comments@ang.af.mil.

Anyone interested may comment on the DEA by sending comments to Robert Dogan, A7AM, Shepperd Hall, Air National Guard Readiness Center, 3501 Fetchet Ave., Joint Base Andrews, MD 20762-5157; or by emailing them to ang.env.comments@ang.af.mil. All comments must be sent before Feb. 8.